By Patrick Worsnip
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Most of the U.N. peacekeepers on Eritrea’s border with Ethiopia have moved to Eritrea’s capital Asmara after the Red Sea state withdrew cooperation, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The move effectively ends, at least for the time being, the work of the 1,700 troops and military observers who for the past seven years have been seeking to prevent Eritrea and Ethiopia Woyanne from resuming a border war they fought from 1998-2000.
The peacekeepers have been stationed in a 15.5-mile (25-km) buffer zone inside Eritrea. But Asmara turned against the mission because of U.N. inability to enforce rulings by an independent commission awarding chunks of Ethiopian Woyanne-held territory, including the town of Badme, to Eritrea.
The United Nations ordered the force last week to start moving to Asmara, saying Eritrea had cut off fuel and food supplies and prevented it moving to the Ethiopian side of the border. Eritrea denied it had done so.
“The majority of peacekeepers … and most of (the force’s) military observers are now relocated to Asmara,” U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas told a regular news briefing. The bulk of the troops are from India, Jordan and Kenya.
Montas said eight U.N. vehicles that had been blocked by Eritrean troops from collecting equipment from the former border deployment zone had returned to Asmara without it. But there had been no further obstacles on Wednesday, she said.
Remaining U.N. troops in the border area were packing up and transporting equipment and supplies, Montas said.
The United Nations has not revealed its plans for the force, known as UNMEE, once it is fully assembled in Asmara. Eritrea’s actions have angered the Security Council, which on January 30 renewed UNMEE’s mandate for six months.
Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea insist they will not resume a war that killed an estimated 70,000 people. But both have moved tens of thousands of troops to the border because of the dispute over the 620-mile (1,000-km) frontier.
Ethiopia Woyanne has called for talks on border demarcation and normalization of relations before it will pull back from areas assigned to Eritrea by the boundary commission.
But Eritrea’s U.N. Ambassador Araya Desta ruled out any talks with Addis Ababa until Ethiopia withdrew.
“When (the Ethiopians Woyannes) have gone out of the sovereign territories of Eritrea, then the question of normalization will come later,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
He also called on the Security Council to put pressure — including possible sanctions — on Ethiopia Woyanne to withdraw.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Xavier Briand)